The Great Seinfeld Watch and Ranking

UPDATE: When we finish an episode, we will add it to the list at the bottom of this page based on how many points it scored out of 100 (50 possible points from me, 50 from Kevin), so you can see how the rankings are taking shape in real time. You’ll also find links to our video recaps from each day.

EVEN UPDATIER: We’ve decided to watch but not rank the highlight “clip” shows just to save a little bit of time.

UPDATIEST: At approximately 1:00 AM on Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012, we completed the Great Seinfeld Watch, having devoted around 90 hours to it over the course of 5.5 days.

For several years, my friend Kevin and I have talked about watching the entire nine-season run of Seinfeld—all 180+ episodes—straight through.

The reason is two-fold: We both consider this show to be modern civilization’s crowning achievement, and we were both kind of scared of girls in college.

At long last, our dream is coming true as part of the 33 Project (although I should point out we are giving ourselves from midnight to 8:00 a.m. each day to reassess our priorities in life). Starting this Sunday, Oct. 7, and likely concluding sometime Friday, Oct. 12, we will be making our way through roughly 70 hours of the greatest television of all-time.

Yes, we both took a week of vacation to do this. I’ll just go ahead and let that sink in.

To say I’m excited would be an understatement. So, too, would saying I’m terrified because there’s a possibility I could very well be about to ruin one of the best things in my life.

Don’t worry: My wife isn’t surprised to hear that.

But not only will we be watching, we’ll be ranking, too, using the following matrix we’ve devised to score each episode:

As for the scores themselves, we have devised the über-scientfic system below, in which the “Laugh Factor/Overall Merit” points will be assigned based on how that episode compares to another two comedies—one past and one present—at their very best, while all other categories will use a scale based on memorable Seinfeld quotes.